Bheith ar Dualgas
by LilRicki
Summary: Written for the 2007 SGA Secret Santa fic exchange. I failed at the prompt, but there's Shepwhump and Rodney angst, so it can't be all bad, right? And then there's the reappearance of an old friend . . .
1. Chapter 1

_Warnings:_ Spoilers for episode 03x17 "Sunday." Takes place some time after that episode but before the episode 03x20 "First Strike."

_Author's Note:_ Thanks to Sarah for the beta. All mistakes are mine.

The idea for this fic originally came to me soon after "Sunday" aired and rumors that Carson had Ascended were rampant. As such, this story is purposely open-ended regarding that matter.

This was written for drdredd for the 2007 Stargate Atlantis Secret Santa fic exchange, even though I completely failed at her prompt. For a long-winded explanation, see the original post on the LiveJournal sgasanta community.

--SGA--

**Bheith ar Dualgas**

_by_ LilRicki

It was safe to say that Doctor Rodney McKay knew everything there was to know about electricity. The problems that plagued common Earth electricians were miniscule compared to what he did with Ancient power systems on a daily basis. True, the Atlantean technology was slightly different, but the basics remained the same. And, like any freshman lab student, he knew the dangers associated with such high power outputs. His genius brain was painfully aware of the way a severe electric shock could affect the human body; burns at the site where the current entered the tissue, ventricular fibrillation and failure of the heart, loss of nervous control and consciousness, blast damage if the voltage was high enough. Yes, Doctor Rodney McKay, brilliant hypochondriac, knew all about the effects of electric shock.

What he didn't know was that they were contagious. After all, what else could cause his heart to seize and body to go numb at the sight of a certain lieutenant colonel flying backward across the room in a brilliant flash of sparks and light?

"Oh no," Rodney breathed when he could breathe again. "Oh no oh no oh no oh no . . ." An alarm blared throughout the abandoned Ancient outpost, though he was only vaguely aware of it as he shakily stepped toward his friend and dropped to his knees. One trembling hand felt for a pulse at the unconscious man's neck.

The lights snapped off, plunging the room into blackness. Time froze in the darkness, Rodney's fingers on Sheppard's throat, aware of the colonel through touch alone. Eons passed, waiting, blinded, feeling nothing under his fingertips but still-warm skin.

_He's dead_, Rodney's mind threw up into his consciousness. _Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead . . ._ Panic flooded his body, but not a muscle moved.

Then, a faint flutter at the tips of his fingers. Simultaneously, the emergency lights flickered, bathing the room in fitful orange light. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief – or maybe it was more of a sob – and took a good look at his friend, his fingers never leaving Sheppard's pulse point.

The lieutenant colonel's face was shadowed. Wisps of smoke rose slowly from his clothing and hair, though the orange light made it impossible to tell if there were any burns. Sheppard looked as if he were deeply asleep, eyes closed, head crooked, mouth slightly open.

"Okay, okay, okay . . ." Rodney barely registered the continuing alarms echoing through the hallways outside. "ABCs, ABCs, airway, airway!" He straightened Sheppard's neck and tilted his head back. "Right, okay, breathing, breathing next . . ." He carefully bent down to put his ear next to Sheppard's parted lips.

"Rodney! Are you there?"

McKay jerked back as the voice pierced the quiet. "Yes, Teyla," he snapped into his radio, "I need you and Ronon _now_. Sheppard's been - been electrocuted!"

"What?" Ronon's low voice growled across the airwaves.

"Zapped! Shocked! Fried! How many ways do I have to put it before your puny intellect –"

"Rodney!" Teyla interrupted. "The doors in your section have been locked. We cannot get to you!"

For the first time, McKay looked around the room. The screens lining the wall, which until recently had been scrolling through the information in the outpost's database, were dark. The console at the other end of the room, at which Sheppard had stood only moments before, smoked and crackled slightly, the interface charred beyond repair. And the door, directly behind him, was shut. He hadn't even noticed when that had happened.

Rodney groaned. "The overload must have shorted the system, put the outpost into a sort of lockdown." Suddenly remembering his fallen team member, he leaned down once more to continue first aid ministrations. "I might be able to override it from here, if the control crystals aren't too badly . . . oh crap."

"Rodney?" The physicist's sudden change of tone had Teyla worried. "What is it?"

"Get back to the 'gate!" Rodney's words were stilted, his voice slightly breathless over the radio. "Dial Atlantis . . . get Zelenka and Beck – a medical team . . . we'll need both."

Neither Ronon nor Teyla missed the slip up.

"It will take time to get back to the Stargate."

"So make Ronon run and . . . bring back a 'jumper . . . _with_ Zelenka!"

"Thought you could fix anything, McKay."

"_I can._" McKay's irritation was palpable. "But I can't exactly _do_ anything when I am literally _breathing for the colonel_."

Teyla met Ronon's eyes. "Go." The Athosian could have sworn the runner left an afterimage standing before her as he took off down the hallway toward the exit. "Rodney, I will search for another way in."

"Good for you," Rodney huffed. "Can't talk now, little busy." If Teyla responded, he didn't hear it. The radio earpiece kept getting in his way, so he ripped it off and let it clatter to the floor. "Come on, Sheppard . . ."

Rodney laughed silently at the universe as he once more covered John's mouth with his own. Two slow breaths, and another check to see if the colonel had started breathing on his own. No luck. Of all the things he'd pictured himself doing today, giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his team leader was not one of them. No, that job he left up to . . . professionals.

But the fear that had spiked in him when he realized John wasn't breathing had been overwhelming. He'd found himself pinching Sheppard's nose and forcing air into the pilot's lungs before he'd even truly been aware of what he was doing. Even now he acted on autopilot, a steady litany running through his mind.

_Don't die, don't die, breathe, please breathe, don't die, please, I can't . . . I can't do it . . . not again, please no, please, don't die, breathe, breathe damn it!_

Two breaths, check for breathing – nothing. He fumbled for a pulse again, and nearly lost his own when he couldn't find one.

"Oh . . . no . . ." Sheppard's image, orange in the emergency lights, wavered before Rodney's suddenly moist eyes. He place one hand on John's chest, desperately willing himself to find a heartbeat through the black tee-shirt.

Nothing.

Without a word, McKay slumped where he knelt, staring blankly at his hand splayed on Sheppard's chest. John didn't blink, didn't move, didn't breathe.

Didn't live.

"No." Rodney's voice was quiet, but fierce. "_No._" He levered himself up, crossed his hands over John's heart, and started compressions.

"Come on," he pleaded. Sheppard's head rocked slightly with each shove. "Don't . . . _don't_ . . ."

And then Rodney was silent as he once again blew air into his friend. Tilt the head back, pinch the nose, two slow breaths, check for pulse – nothing.

"Damn it!" Rodney cursed as he realized the futility of it all. For a brief moment, he allowed his shoulders to sag.

Then . . .

"Rodney, ya daft bugger, get back to work, he's not gonna bloody resuscitate himself."

Frozen, not daring to move, Rodney raised his eyes to the perfect likeness of Doctor Carson Beckett, standing before him with arms crossed.

The image of Carson huffed. "You're runnin' out of time here, Rodney. You know the brain canna last long without oxygen."

When Rodney still refused to budge, the figure of Carson knelt across from him. "Rodney. _Now._"

Slowly, the physicist raised himself back up, eyes locked on the Scot's. Then, looking down, he once more crossed his hands over Sheppard's heart and began pumping.

"Ach, not there, over the sternum! Don't ya remember any of my first aid classes?"

For the first time, since the thing that couldn't be Beckett had appeared, Rodney made a noise, somewhere between a giggle and a choking sound. He adjusted his hands accordingly.

"That's better. Harder, lad – you're restarting his heart, not giving him a bloody massage."

Obediently, Rodney pushed harder, this time letting a clearly disbelieving laugh escape his lips.

He worked in silence for a while, entirely focused on the alternation of compressions and breaths, methodically trying to force life back into the colonel. Starting compressions again, he looked up and found the impersonation of Carson still kneeling near him.

"You know," Rodney said, breathing hard from his exertions, "Heightmeyer's going to have a _field day_ with this . . . I mean, I know I'm a genius and all . . . but I don't even have a concussion this time . . ." He paused to administer two more slow breaths into the colonel's mouth.

"Don't forget to tilt the head back to open his airway," not-Carson reminded him.

Rising again, the ache in his shoulders slowly turning into fire up and down his back and arms, Rodney continued. "Kate said . . . I should say goodbye to you . . . and I always knew I had a vivid imagination . . . but _wow_ . . ."

What might have been a faint smile flickered across Carson's face.

"But you gotta admit . . . pretty smart . . . hot, blonde astrophysicist for a sinking puddlejumper . . . and a doctor for the dying military commander . . ." Rodney stopped talking and bit the inside of his cheek.

"Don't slow down," Carson said. "You've got to keep him going until help comes."

Rodney barked a laugh, but there wasn't much force behind it. "No," he grunted, after two more breaths, "you said . . . until help comes . . . or you physically can't continue." The physicist's face was flushed red, even in the orange lights, and his arms were beginning to shake with exertion. "I remember that."

"Aye," Carson said slowly. Then there was silence between them for a long time.

Rodney lost track of how many times he compressed John's chest, how many breaths he blew into still lungs, how many hopes were dashed each time he paused to check for a pulse and found nothing. His back muscles screamed at him, his arms and shoulders were in agony, and he occasionally had to remember to take in oxygen for himself, too, when little black spots began dancing in his vision. And through it all, the silent picture of his dead best friend squatted on the balls of its feet, arms resting on its knees, attentively watching Rodney work.

"They wouldn't let me see your body," Rodney blurted after some time, nearly gasping. "Not at first, anyways . . . But," he choked a little, checking the unresponsive pilot's pulse again, "I have a vivid imagination."

"Aye," the Scot said again, softly.

Still no pulse. And something broke in Rodney.

"Go away," he whispered, slumping backward onto his heels. One hand remained on the colonel's unmoving chest. "Just . . . leave."

"Rodney . . ."

"I can't," he hissed shakily, head bowed, refusing to look at either of his dead friends. "I can't . . ."

"You_ can,_" Carson insisted. "You _must_, Rodney!"

McKay sat and breathed heavily.

"You're going to lose him, Rodney." The scientist shuddered at the verbalization of his own thoughts. "Just like Brendan, and Peter, and Collins." Carson leaned forward and spoke so softly his voice shouldn't have carried so clearly over the still-blaring alarms. "Just like me."

Something between a defiant yell and a tortured scream ripped out of Rodney's throat, and with sudden energy, he surged forward, hands clasped, and beat on the colonel's chest. Again, and again, and again, bruising his fists, numbing his fingers, and he couldn't even remember if he was doing this to save John or to act out his anger.

Like a deranged warrior, he grunted and yelled and growled, with each strike announcing his battle cry, as if he could scare death out of the colonel, as if the physical abuse might convince the pilot to wake up, as if –

A long, hideous, painful gasp tore from Sheppard's throat as his body arched and his lungs filled. His hands flew up, grabbing at air and then at Rodney's jacket as the barely conscious man flailed for some sort of anchor in the darkness. Immediately, a violent coughing fit seized his body, and the colonel tried to curl onto his side, almost bringing McKay down with him.

"Hey hey hey!" Rodney said, voice rough, "come on, just . . . just, ah . . ." The physicist managed to get the pilot into a sitting position, leaning over one of McKay's arms with Rodney awkwardly patting his back as the spasms continued to rack John's body.

"Hey," Rodney said again, laughing in intense relief, not caring that it sounded a little hysterical and a little insane and a little like sobbing, because John probably couldn't hear him right now anyways. "Hey."

At some point, Carson stood, a look of satisfaction on his face, and stepped out of Rodney's field of vision.

When the doors opened behind him and the medical team swarmed into the room, John's brutal coughing had ceased and been replaced with heavy breathing. Rodney, for his part, was relieved enough to berate both Zelenka and the med team for taking so long; as he told them, while he might be familiar with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he had no idea what to do with the patient afterward.

The medics quickly loaded the semi-conscious colonel onto a stretcher and hurried out the door, followed quickly by Ronon and Teyla. Rodney, however, paused and turned back to the room.

"Rodney?" Teyla asked, stopping to look at him worriedly.

"Hmm?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Oh," he said, shaking his head and giving the empty room one last glance, "no, nothing."

The usual post-mission activities passed in a haze once they were back on Atlantis. Rodney attended the debriefing with characteristic impatience. He complained loudly during his post-mission check-up. He chided John about "touching things he shouldn't" when the team brought their leader's dinner to the infirmary.

It wasn't until he was alone in his room later that night that he let himself cry.

--SGA--

_Author's Note:_ "bheith ar dualgas," according to online resources, is Gaelic for "to be on call."

This is where I originally intended to end the story. For a slightly less angst-filled tag to it, see Chapter Two.

Feedback, of both the positive and constructively critical kinds, is much appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note:_ This tag is optional. I added it because this fic ended up being practically the antithesis of everything drdredd asked for. Except for one thing: she said, "Carson. I miss the good doctor." And, basically, my reply through this fic was, "Me, too."

--SGA--

"So, when are they letting you out?"

"This afternoon. Apparently, being clinically dead, even for a little bit, is a serious thing around here."

"Hmm."

"That was a joke, McKay."

"Ah, yes, well . . . ha ha."

"Ha ha? Are you feeling okay, Rodney?"

"Yes – why?"

"Oh, maybe it's because you haven't made me thank you for saving my life yet."

"What? You said thank you last night!"

"I meant in the last five minutes."

"Oh."

"Yeah. _Oh._ Seriously, what is it?"

"I just . . . I'm not sure if I'm the one you should be thanking. See, I – hey, what are you doing?!"

"Checking you for a fever."

"Will you just stop and listen?!"

"Fine. Go ahead."

"Okay, okay. Um, see . . . something happened, when you were . . ."

"Dead?"

"Didn't I say _listen_? Right. Ah, do you remember anything from . . . that time?"

"I can talk now?"

"Colonel!"

"No, not really."

"Ah, okay. Well, I had to remember all those first aid classes we took, and then . . . Carson . . ."

"What?"

"He . . . I saw . . . I just think we should really be thanking Carson for saving your life, that's all."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"That's . . . strangely true, I guess."

"Well, I'm glad you agree. I'll just . . . be going, then."

"Okaaaay. See you later."

"Later."

"Rodney?"

"Yeah?"

"I miss him, too."

--SGA--

Again, feedback, of both the positive and constructively critical kinds, is much appreciated.


End file.
